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should approach protest of Stolen Elections in a different way. One big difference is Mexico still has paper ballots, so they can actually go find the lost votes in the garbage dump. The stuffed or emptied ballot boxes were combined with a new electronic central tabulation system that was used to try to cover up the excess votes in Calderon areas. But here, both voting and vote tabulation have been taken over by private electronic corporations with very close ties to the Bush regime (mainly Diebold and its brethren electronic voting firm, ES&S)--a coup that occurred very quickly, in the 2002-2004 period, as the result of a $4 billion electronic voting boondoggle by the Anthrax Congress, engineered by crooks Tom Delay and Bob Ney--and it's all run on TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code, with virtually no audit/recount controls. One third of the nation voted on entirely paperless voting machines in 2004--not even auditable or recountable. We have to GET BACK TO square one--paper ballots, hand counted--before we can even begin to find out where fraud is occurring. The culture of secrecy and corruption that these Bushite corporations have brought to our election system is also a big problem and an obstacle to transparent elections.
It looks like Fox/Calderon and the Mexican fascist establishment is going to try an overt fascist clampdown. They have a full scale rebellion going on in Oaxaca that started in June with a police helicopter assault on striking teachers, in the middle of the night--the teachers were camping out--the local community revolted and have set up an alternative state government; they believe that the Oaxaca state governor, who has been very repressive, was put in power with a fraudulent election in 2004--so this protest is quite related to the one in Mexico City and other southern states over the presidential election, and I would say that these protests overall do have a relationship to the vast, peaceful, democratic, leftist revolution that has swept Latin America over the last several years, with leftist governments elected in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Venezuela and Bolivia, and strong leftist movements in Peru, Nicaragua and other places. The vast population of the poor and the brown in these countries is finally coming into its own through a lot of hard work on transparent elections. As Evo Morales, the first 100% indigenous president of Bolivia has said, "The time of the people has come."
Here, we DON'T HAVE this community-minded population of the poor, the brown and the indigenous--a Latin American movement with its own word-of-mouth communication system, that is also bolstered by an even vaster movement of small farmers (also small business, workers and human rights groups) that stretches around the world. It is this strong organization of campesinos that is challenging U.S.-based and other global corporate predators who have conspired through undemocratic trade agreements to create a very unfree global marketplace of cheap labor and easy resource exploitation. The war profiteering corporate news monopolies have near total control of the airwaves in places like Mexico and Venezuela. The reformers just ignore them! In 2002, for instance, the TV stations in Venezuela--wholly in thrall to the rich oil elite--openly supported a violent military coup against their elected president Hugo Chavez, who was kidnapped for several days. Thousands of Venezuelans poured into the streets and stopped the coup. They pay no attention to "faux" news in these countries.
Here, while most people have formed their own negative opinion of Bush and the Bush junta--despite 24/7 propaganda--our people HAVE succumbed to the subtler brainwashing they are in the MINORITY. That is the triumph of the fascist press here. People feel isolated and alone, and disempowered. Also, here, the RECENT election fraud scandal--these highly manipulable electronic voting systems that lock in fascist corporate control--is the most black-holed story of all. Most people don't know WHY we have such pigs running the country. Many think that OTHER Americans have gone nuts--and that a majority voted for them.
So, how do WE protest--with our fractured, scattered, non-communal, individualist population that nevertheless has the common ground (though they may not know it) of feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness. I think we need to go a different route than street protests. And focusing on our basic power as a sovereign people--our right to vote--I think we have to start there, and try to recover transparency in vote counting.
How?
The election reform movement is growing by leaps and bounds--with new groups, lawsuits, many articles, books and web sites, and the passionate commitment of many individual activists--but there is nothing on the horizon to prevent Stolen Election III this fall. One thing that hasn't been noticed by this movement is the surge in Absentee Ballot voting (it's up to 50% in Los Angeles). People DON'T TRUST THE MACHINES--and with damn good reason. They are obviously getting the word, and are trying to outfox the system, and get a paper ballot, hand-counted, by voting Absentee. They may not be aware that AB votes are not "safe" either.
I think we should go with this indigenous citizen protest--and encourage AB voting, and make it really big. FLOOD election officials with MOUNTAINS of paper AB votes to deal with, create panic and crisis in the election theft industry, and FORCE reform NOW. We need to FORCE these corrupt election officials to the table. If the number of people who despise the Bush junta (65%-70%) BOYCOTTED the machines and voted AB, we would really have something. The SECOND "shot heard round the world." American Revolution II.
If we can get rid of this system of non-transparent, electronic voting counting--which became so quickly entrenched by corrupt means--we can do anything!
AB voting is easy. Everybody can do it. (Most states have some form of AB voting--some easier than others.) It will help turnout. To those who say, "it's all rigged--why vote?"--we can say, but this is a protest vote aimed at UN-rigging the system. Ergo, no excuse for not voting. AB voting can give expression to people's discontent. It makes voting into a positive protest, rather than a passive, hopeless act. Massive AB voting will NOT give us accurate vote counts this fall--except where election officials respond and begin handling AB votes in a more responsible way*--but it CAN significantly pressure the system toward reform. And we can then salvage the '08 primaries and election.
Bust the Machines! Bust Bush! Bust the War! Bust Congress! VOTE ABSENTEE!
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*(AB votes are often disregarded and counted last, or merely scanned right into the riggable electronic system. They are no more secure than optiscan votes. The difference is that you are NOT COOPERATING with this extremely insider hackable system. You are NOT VOTING ON THEIR MACHINES. All this expensive election theft equipment--and nobody will use it! That's the idea--a very pointed PROTEST aimed at challenging corrupt--or stupid--election officials' purchase of these incredibly insecure and hackable systems. ALL electronic voting system components are EASILY riggable--thousands of votes can be changed, at the speed of light, leaving no trace. The paperless touchscreens are the worst. But all of it is riggable. With hand-counted paper ballots, the speed and invisibility of fraud is eliminated, and at least you have a chance of catching the fraud, as they have done in Mexico. Voting AB is not a guarantee. It is a PROTEST!)
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